


I See You

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [257]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Sucide attempt, Mentions of past abuse, suicid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23154664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: Cody attempted suicide last year, and was then hospitalized for a few months. He recently came back to school, and that's when Adam and him, both attending Art classes at college, started getting close. Adam doesn't mind spending time drawing with Cody, as Cody's quiet, reserved, shy and pretty talented, from Adam's point of view, but today he seems a little unsettled, and Adam decides to ask why.
Relationships: Original Male Character & Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [257]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Collections: COWT - Clash Of the Writing Titans/Chronicles Of Words and Trials





	I See You

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a spin-off sequel for Broken Heart Syndrome. This means that, despite not being properly set after BHS (but that's only because BHS is probably never going to have a proper ending and we'll keep talking about these people forever), it depicts things happening way late in the 'verse, and that may be on varying degrees of spoiler.
> 
> Written for this year's COWT #10, W6, M1, prompt: "speak truth".

They’ve been meeting outside of the classroom for a while already. Ten, eleven times? Adam can’t remember precisely – it’s not like he’s keeping count, anyway. 

He likes Cody’s company. He’s quiet and sweet. He smells good. His works are interesting and looking at them stimulates and inspire Adam to do better with his own. He’s the only person with whom he doesn’t mind sharing the precious spot he found in the college garden, where he loves to go drawing.

It’s a nice little corner behind the Robotics building. A silent hill shrouded in trees where the grass is always soft and well-kept, and where virtually no one ever goes – Robotics students hate to spend time in the great, dangerous outside. 

Up until Cody found out about that spot – by himself, Adam never led him there – Adam was the only one spending time there. He brought his sketchbook, or a canvas if that was what he was working on at the moment, and sat there for hours, until it was too dark to see any longer.

Then, one day, Cody arrived, sketchbook underneath his arm, and apologized for the intrusion, but also asked if Adam minded if he worked a little there. By then they had spoken a few times in class already, and Adam knew he was a nice guy, quiet and quite shy, so he allowed it. He hasn’t regretted it, yet.

Today, though, Cody’s a little restless. Adam has never seen him like this. He’s seen him sad and depressed at time – as expected from someone who endured what people say Cody endured recently – but never so nervous. He keeps fidgeting, can’t sit still, keeps changing position on the pale blue blanket he brought along and spread on the ground not to sit directly on the grass.

Adam keeps watching him out of the corner of one eye, and at some point he has enough – he’s distracting, when he wiggles like that – and finally speaks. “What’s the matter?”

Cody tenses and freezes like he’s been caught up with his hands in the jam jar. “N-- Nothing,” he says, looking down. Adam sees him try to concentrate on his drawing again, but his eyes keep wandering elsewhere, and Adam snorts, annoyed.

“There clearly is something,” he says, “You’re distracted. And you’re distracting me.”

“I’m-- I’m sorry,” Cody says, blushing, “I’ll leave right away.”

“What? No!” Adam stops him, putting down his brush. He wasn’t expecting him to have such a strong reaction. “No, that’s not what I wanted you to do.” He sighs and slides off his portable stool, sitting on the blanket next to Cody. He doesn’t touch him, and Cody doesn’t feel the need to withdraw. “I just meant… we’ve been spending some time together, haven’t we? I mean, I enjoy spending time with you and I thought you were at ease here. You never look much at ease anywhere else, but you did here.”

Cody can’t look at him, and he keeps bushing, nodding slowly. “I do…”

“Then why would you wanna leave?”

“You said I’m bothering you…”

“I’m bothered by the fact that there’s something bothering you,” Adam huffs, scratching his nape, “And I wanted you to know that you can talk about it with me, if you want.”

Cody finally raises his eyes, batting his eyelashes. He’s got eyes of such an incredible light blue they almost look transparent. They’re the eyes of a child. “It’s just…” he says, swallowing uneasily, “It’s already been a year since it happened. I wasn’t expecting to… still feel so much about it.”

He doesn’t specify what _it_ is that happened – but there’s no need to. Everybody on campus knows, Adam included.

One year ago, Cody attempted suicide. He tore his wrists open up until his elbows, then sat down in a tub filled with hot water and slowly let himself bleed to death. He was found a few minutes later by his housemates, who pulled him out of the tub and immediately called for an ambulance, and luckily he survived. He’s been hospitalized and he only came back to school a few months ago – that’s when Adam and him started to become friendly with one another.

Adam swallows, looking away. He always feels a little embarrassed when people speak about their personal problems. He does realize he was the one asking, though, so he’s gotta keep it up, now. “Do… do you wanna talk about it?”

Cody shrugs a little, looking away too. “Do you know why it happened?”

Adam scratches his chin, nervously. “I’ve heard a few things. I’m sorry-- people talk. I try not to get involved, but sometimes you don’t even need to ask.”

“Don’t apologize… there’s no need,” Cody smiles a little, “It was my boyfriend. I mean-- the boy who used to be my boyfriend back then. William Everleigh. You know him?”

“Vaguely,” Adam admits, “He graduated last year, right? Pretty cool guy, they say. He was always high up on the leaderboard of the most well-performing students, wasn’t he?”

“He tortured me for two years, raping me and hitting me on a daily basis for the whole time we were together.”

It feels like hearing a window crash in the house in the middle of the night and knowing for sure that there are people coming in to rob you and slit your throat. It’s not just unsettling, it’s not just terrible, it’s terrifying. As Adam sits there, horrified, Cody looks down and keeps talking.

“I loved him blindly,” he says in a soft voice, “I had never been treated the way he treated me. He was violent and scary and he did horrible things… but when he didn’t, he treated me like a precious jewel. He could do things like… like, I don’t know, keeping me tied up to the bed for two days, no food, no water, not even allowing me to go to the bathroom, but all the while he laid down next to me, caressing my hair, kissing me gently, telling me I was his dearest possession. He treated me like that for such a long time I couldn’t even understand good from bad any longer, at some point. Like… pain and pleasure felt the same to me. Exactly the same. I remember two moments… very specific moments I really understood my brain wasn’t functioning properly anymore. One time he kicked me in my guts for, like, twenty minutes straight, and my body had the weirdest reaction. I just-- I was _enjoying_ it, I liked it so much I ended up--” he blushes and covers his face, biting at his bottom lip for a moment. “Tell me if I should stop.”

“Jesus Christ, no,” Adam gets closer and puts a hand on his shoulder, stroking it warmly, “It’s-- It’s terrible, but if you wanna keep talking, I’m hear to listen. You can tell me everything. I swear I won’t tell a soul.”

Cody nods, shivering a little. “I had an orgasm,” he says it and then exhales as though an incredible weight had just been lifted off his shoulders. “I was shocked. He called me a slut and left me there, dirty and spitting blood. Then, a few days later, he came back home and I don’t know why he was in a frenzy, he was like that, sometimes, he just got super horny, and so he just-- he just had sex with me, you know, like a normal person. And I felt nothing. I couldn’t even get hard. So he called me a whore, came on my face and left me there on the bed alone for hours, afterwards.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a second. “I wasn’t functioning anymore, you know? I was majorly messed up.”

Adam swallows and nods, his hand moving down to rub Cody’s back. “I… I understand. You couldn’t bear it any longer, so you… so that’s why you did it.”

“No,” Cody lets go of a bitter laughter as he wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, “That’s the fun part. I was perfectly fine enduring it. I would’ve just kept enduring it forever, I guess, if I had died during our relationship it would’ve been because he would’ve ended up killing me inadvertently or something. But what happened is way sadder,” he chuckles again, “He actually broke up with me. I guess he was bored with me, at some point, or, well, I don’t know, he graduated and he knew he wanted to move to Massachusetts for some graduate program in Harvard and he didn’t see a point in keeping me since I’d be so far away… anyway, he broke up with me and left. And that’s when I lost it. I cried and begged him not to leave me. I was desperate, completely heartbroken. I couldn’t believe that…” he stops suddenly, biting at his bottom lip.

“… you couldn’t believe what?” Adam tries, resisting the need to pull him into a comforting hug.

Cody breathes deeply again. “I couldn’t believe that I had been through so much only for him to just leave me like that. Like it didn’t matter. Like _I_ didn’t matter, you know. I… I was stupidly thinking, I guess, that since I had gone through all that then I deserved to be at least considered his boyfriend forever.”

“Cody, that’s…” Adam tries, squeezing him a little, “That’s not true. No one deserves what you’ve been through. No one.”

“I know,” Cody chuckles softly, shrugging and looking away, “But back then I believed that. He wasn’t my torturer, you know, in my mind he was the reward I got for enduring torture. He was smart, talented, handsome, rich, gifted in every aspect—”

“Except humanity.”

Cody lets out a shaky breath, smiles and nods. “Except that, right. But he had everything else. And I couldn’t believe a person like that could be interested in someone like me. So, in a way, even the abuse felt like a gift to me, because at least it was something.”

“But _something_ instead of what?”

Cody shrugs again. The smile on his face doesn’t falter, and it’s the saddest smile Adam has ever seen. “Instead of nothing. Instead of being bullied around by people that kept calling me useless, dirty fag, sissy whore. People writing my name and phone number in the stalls at school with a call me, I’m available written underneath. People stealing my clothes after PE and throwing them in the thrash. People throwing _me_ in the thrash. That was what I had before William. So what William gave me-- at least I was _seen_ , you know. He saw me. He wanted me. If only to break me. But he wanted me.”

Adam’s heart shrinks to the side of an ant, and the compression feels so painful for a second he can’t even breathe. This is the most horrible story he’s ever been told. And up to this moment, the most horrible story he had ever been told was the tale of his father’s death in a foreign land, during the war. So that’s something. “I’m… I’m sorry all this happened to you,” he says, “But I’m glad you chose to tell me. Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Cody chuckles, moving just slightly away from him, signaling very clearly that close contact has become uncomfortable for him. Adam stops touching him right away. “I had never told any of this to anyone that wasn’t my therapist. He always told me telling friends and family would make me feel better, but honestly, I never believed him.”

“And… do you feel any better, now?”

“Surprisingly, yes,” Cody chuckles again. Then he smiles, a more open, slightly more confident smile. “Better enough that I can stop fidgeting and keep drawing, at least. So I won’t bother you anymore,” he adds with a tiny brattish smile.

“Oh, Jesus,” Adam groans, rolling his eyes, “I’ll never hear the end of this, will I?”

“Never,” Cody chuckles, crouching his shoulders a little.

Adam looks at him – he seems a little better, now. His features aren’t tense anymore, and he isn’t as jumpy as before. “For what it’s worth…” he feels like saying it, so he says it, “I think you’re a sweet and talented guy. And I like spending time with you. I realize the people you’ve met in your life made you feel otherwise, but if you wanna keep seeing me here we can draw together every afternoon and you can consider this your reward, okay? I mean, not that I am or could be anyone’s reward,” Adam adds, blushing wildly.

“You could,” Cody chuckles, amused, “But let’s not go there.”

“Absolutely, I agree,” Adam nods and then shakes his head in rapid succession, “Anyway. I don’t care how other people saw you in the past. _I_ see you now. I do. Okay?”

Cody’s smile widens just a little, and then he nods.


End file.
